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==Microsoft== | ==Microsoft== | ||
Revision as of 00:49, 14 December 2014
Microsoft, the company the world loves to hate. After killing Nokia, everyone has found a reason to hate Microsoft. Nevertheless, we were treated to a VIP tour around the Microsoft building. We were shown some exciting use cases such as the “Emperor Chair”, a fully immersive experience followed by large touch screens and 3D printing/scanning. The talk given by Matt Thomson was enlightening. It’s definitely true that despite the flak that the company is receiving, they have contributed to the startup ecosystem in many ways. I've heard of the BizSpark program before and it is refreshing that he has mentioned it again during the talk. What was particularity interesting to me was that the average worker in Silicon Valley is 50% more productive compared to the average worker around the world. In addition, more money is invested in Silicon Valley by VCs than anywhere else in the world. At the end of the presentation, he mentioned that the main difference between starting a company in Singapore and Silicon Valley is that it is difficult to find talent in Singapore willing to work for low pay and high equity for an extended period of time. Maybe this is a problem with the education system and culture of Singapore? With a free book and snacks, we felt like were VIPs in Microsoft, compared to the other startups that we went to. They have most definitely left a good impression on us. After a quick tour around the Microsoft store and lunch at their cafeteria, we headed to Serena software.
At Serena, we were ushered into a meeting room where they showed us what they are all about. In essence, they control software changes in enterprises. Yawns. Boring stuff. But they are doing pretty well. Many fortune 1000 companies are using Serena Software to assist them in developing and deploying their software. After the introduction, they moved us to a small room to mingle. It was humbling to see that the CEO was really open and came to engage us despite us being students. He mentioned that the company currently has about 400 employees, a middle sized company. Not huge like Google but also large enough that it doesn’t have to worry that it’ll be bankrupt the next day. A sweet spot that few companies enjoy. Would this breed complacency? Maybe. But Serena doesn’t seem to have many competitors to begin with. If you thought the first presentation wasn’t interesting, the demo would make you sleep like a baby. Though I get the gist of what they guy was demoing, I doubt I would ever use such a software in the future, simple because I would probably not work for a large enterprise. If you compare the demo skills between PayPal and Serena, PayPal wins by a mile. Similarly to Microsoft, we were treated like VIPs at Serena. We got a free copy of their software, among other paraphernalia. I thought that the atmosphere of the company was extremely welcoming and inviting. Might be because it isn’t too big like most other enterprises.
At Stanford, we were greeted by Monica, a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. It turns out that she’s only a PR in Singapore and she has been travelling around since her mom moved to Switzerland when she was 15. Stanford has an amazing campus. We had to take a campus bus to get in, just to give you an idea how big is it. Surrounded by beautiful architecture and landscaping, it’s an amazing place to study. She first brought us to the Computer Science building and its named “Gates”, after Bill Gates. The amount of history that was made behind the walls of this school is mindblowing. The school is pretty empty at this time so we just walked around a bit before making our way to the small classroom where we saw the NUS peeps. I soon learnt that the NUS students just finished their 6 month local internship before finishing their module with this trip. As much as I envy them, I hope SMU thinks of doing starting the NOC program soon. It would greatly benefit students who are hoping to intern and eventually secure a job overseas. Anyone could also notice the stark difference between SMU and NUS students. NUS students still have some way to go with their social skills. But I’m sure there are some areas where we, SMU students, are lacking too and can learn from them. NUS made it compulsory to accept an even ratio of students from the different schools. I feel that this is a good initiative to promote diversity and encourage more differing views in their trip. This is something that SMU can learn. I’m not just saying this because I’m the only business student haha. Anyway, it was good to learn that Mohammed, the guy who is working at Google, didn’t go in through the normal route. Instead, he had a decent portfolio on GitHub and recruiters spotted him. Hard work pays off, eventually. It was 5 years before they called him! Before we knew it, it was time to head back.
Microsoft
Microsoft has always been a legend in my mind, it is a company start really changed the world. When I was young, I have always been looking up to Microsoft as the father of all computer. I remembered the first time when I was first intro to Windows 96, and it was so different from my dad’s old computer that was just c command and nothing else. I had a fun time play the minesweeper and solitaire! Those were the few games that I was first exposed to when I was young and I thought those games were really fun. Basically, Microsoft has always been with me since I was a young boy and I am always fond of Microsoft. Ps: I even have a Microsoft Surface 2!
We were greeted by the team at Microsoft and Kenny Space brought us around Microsoft centre where he showed us a few of Microsoft’s new developments. What I was very impressed was the 3D-printing division. They merged the new line of Microsoft Kinect together with the 3D-printing, I was very amazed by how they are managed to scan the environment and 3D-print it immediately. The Kinect product has the capability of capturing live model and immediately transfer it to a softcopy for further rendering on other software. I am very keen in 3D-modelling and this new feature is one of a kind. I believe that I will never have the chance to experience such an amazing feature back in Singapore.
Thereafter, we were brought into a meeting room where Matt Thompson gave us a very insightful presentation. He presented on how Microsoft is changing and evolving. This totally debunked my perception of Microsoft! Indeed, Microsoft is no more the ostrich’s head in the sand, Microsoft believes the concept of Cloud and making its presence everywhere. It has presence on our laptops, mobile and game. Microsoft is now an extensive diverse company that is here to stay.
He also mentioned about the venture capitalist and how Microsoft is there to render its service and technological expertise to new start-ups. This shows how different is Microsoft from other venture capital companies because they participate and share the knowledge to ensure success. This is remarkable because it does not only view start-ups as revenue opportunity but more of encouraging more innovation and initiation in the valley. This truly build the spirit of Silicon Valley’s community and spur on IT innovation.
Microsoft is nowhere near outdated and it strives to improve to ensure competitive advantage against the big companies like Apple and Google. I have faith in Microsoft and they can get back on track in the near future.
Serena Software
Kevin from Serena Software is a very charismatic person, which has a strong deep British accent. He explained to us what Serena Software is all about. So this companies provides an application that operates the Polytron Version Control System (PVCS) for companies. They are the manager for changes. This extremely important for company that has no room for adversity to manage any changes on their codes. This is where Serena Software comes in. Drawing more relatable context to us, Kevin uses Starhub as an example to illustrate the service of Serena Software. He emphasized that Starhub is no more just a telecommunication company but a technological one. It is imperative to handle all Starhub diverse business services all at a go to ensure no failure throughout. He also brought in the Hong Kong’s MTR example where they have 50 over devices to pay with 100 over machines that handles it. This shows the importance of versioning of deployment etc. Thus, Serena Software is very useful in this aspect. Serena Software’s CEO Greg Hudges came to talk to us at the reception, he spoke about the state that Serena Software is and even though it is not a start-up, it is a medium size company that has to always ensure that revenues come in. He spoke about the need to expand the business in the Asia Pacific region where there’s a strong and growing demand for them.
We went back to the meeting room to run the demo of their system. Their system is very user friendly and useful. It runs on all REST web service in its plugins and allows the user to upload his own plugins. Serena Software is very interesting and they were very warmth as they gave us many freebies to take away. I had a wonderful experience in Serena Software and got a great insights of how Singapore has a lot business with the Valley.
Get together with Stanford and NUS
Monica from Stanford brought us around the campus and was very hospitable to us. She led us to the clubhouse where we met up with the bunch of guys from NUS. They were also on a start-up tour for 2 weeks and had the same inspiration as us to gain better insights for entrepreneurship. We had a blast with great food and beer.
I had the chance to speak with the twins from NUS. Both of them are accounting students in NUS, and to my surprise, they are not keen in the auditing/accounting side. They came for this trip because they both shared the same passion of designing and want to craft a business out of this. They have been doing freelance graphic design work over the past years and are hoping to gain more from their trip. I am very inspired by their vision and hard work. I do share the same passion in designing but have not really thought through carefully in doing it as a business. I am truly ashamed of myself when I heard their agenda.
We all had a great time together and took a group picture together. Both the people at Stanford and NUS were pleased with the token and cite up over the tau sah piah. I am glad that we had this dinner together and it was a great hangout as different college students.
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Microsoft
It was really cool being in Microsoft’s Technology Centre today. The demos with the Kinect was my favourite part. And seeing 3D models for the first time was definitely super cool.
The presentation by Matt was really good too. He focused on the culture and opportunities in SV and provided us with facts and figures to justify just how awesome SV is.
Matt also emphasised on the trend of successful startups having a technical founder who knew not only knew WHAT to do, but HOW to do it (scaling the solution, platform to work on etc.). Therefore, his main proposition was that the technical aspect is very important for startups and therefore works with a team of technical guys to help him and help startups prosper.
Matt also emphasised the the Internet of Things and machine learning are very important trends and factors to consider when thinking about what the future might hold. Machine learning would be especially good for use in the Silicon Valley (just like what Kai said at BitTorrent) to be able to get loads of data, look at the data and get insights from it and improve your solutions. Matt said that was how Cortana worked on recognising user input and providing suggestions.
Quote from Microsoft:
“We are seeing people fail 4, 5, 6, 7 even 8 times before they finally breakthrough.” How do you even have the determination to continue despite so many failures? Passion and technical expertise I would think.
“Who is the first person you would look for when you need help? The person next to you, your friends and closed ones. Your social network of technical entrepreneurs with expertise. And there loads of these kind of people in the Valley."
Serena
The people at Serena are really nice and welcoming. The fact that the CEO came to visit and talk to us, and the preparation of the food and drinks and the gifts for us really made me feel very welcomed at Serena.
Serena is all about change and efficient movement through a life cycle of an application. My main takeaway from Serena was that sometimes you do not have to become an MNC or remain as a small start-up. Sometimes a size of 400 for your company and financial stability is great too.
Stanford
Love the architecture and the hugeness of the campus at Stanford. Despite the coldness and the dark, it was really nice of Monica and the other 2 students to bring us around and finally to the lounge where we got to mingle with NUS students. I got to talk to many of them and learnt about some of the companies they had visited which we did not. They were really friendly and open too, and I liked the dinner mix and mingle session with them.
Once they had left, we all sat around and was talking to Muhammad, Yan Hao and Prof about making it here in the valley (for example by doing your Masters here, finding an internship in the less popular startups) and that we should believe in ourselves that we can do it too, like all the amazing people we have met on our trip thus far. Really hope I will get to work in the valley one day and get to wake up everyday looking forward to the day because I will be doing what I love the most.
Microsoft is another great company that we visited, the first think that surprised me is not something technical, but actually their attitude towards us. For all the companies that we have visited, only Nitrouse.IO and Serena gave us some kind of gifts, I never expect the technology giant will actually care about us. But the fact is that they actually prepare a talk and some gifts for us. Such attitude is very hard to find in MNCs, but personally I believe it is very important because people from small companies will remember that for a very long period of time, they feel horned and appreciated, if they become good next time, they won’t forget such treatment from Microsoft.
Many people think Microsoft products are not user friendly and they are not the cool company anymore, Google, Facebook and many other new companies have taken over him. But the presentation I heard from Microsoft proved again what a great company is like. Firstly, Microsoft or at least Microsoft Technology Center has a great vision, they spot the opportunities in startups and understand that they can hardly compete with the amount of new ideas in the world, instead of competing with the startups, Microsoft actually provides many programs or resources to help those startups to grow, especially those at very early stage when almost no one notices them. The reason is that most technology company needs to choose their platform at the very beginning, and when the company reaches certain scale, it will be very hard for the company to switch technology or platform simply because of the huge cost and complexity involved. Microsoft wants to catch these startups when they are really young and grow them on Microsoft platform, so if any of them become successful next time, they will probably become the next big client of Microsoft. I should say such vision is so great that Microsoft technically does not need to do much, they organized competitions, manage applications and try to spot startups in the valley, all they need to do after that is to provide the resources that they already have to the startups and wait for them to grow. The cost for Microsoft is low, but the potential return is huge.
Secondly, when everyone is talking about analytics, Microsoft has already position himself in a safe yet very profitable position in the market. There is no doubt that business analytics is going to be the next hot topic in the valley or even the whole world, so the question is how does each company do analytics and help their business decisions. Microsoft provides the solution for it. Microsoft does not need to know the context of the business, does not need to look at the actual data and provide concrete plans, all they need to do is to provide the tool and as long as the company wants to focus on analytics, they will definitely need to tool. Just like last century, when most people are trying to find gold in San Francisco, the ones who gain the most wealth are the ones who sell shovels. Azure, as Microsoft’s next selling point, make Microsoft become a tool provider which is the safest and most lucrative position in the analytics trend.
Serena is the only company we visited that actually focused mostly on enterprise product. The company is at a pretty interesting state compare to other companies we have visited. Unlike most companies which are either small startups trying to generate profit, or big companies which are looking for going public, Serena is a medium size company with about 400 employees, its clients are all over the world and from all kinds of industries, such as Starhub, UBS and others. The interesting is that Serena is not at the stage which profit is a problem, but it is not planning to grow in terms of number of employees. This stage for it is quite comfortable, they have already gotten many great products which they can sell to their customers, there is little pressure on developing new products like most consumer oriented market. Hence, they focus on sales of such software, instead of development and this lead to a low demand in terms of employees and eventually result in a profitable medium size company. Serena shows that medium size company is another possible goal for any startups, not just go public or get acquired. If a company can constantly generate revenue, medium size will be a pretty good and easy state to maintain its sustainability.
Our host at Stanford is Monica who is a Singaporean student who studies here, we had a tour around the campus, but sadly didn’t have any chances to experience the lesson in Stanford. The one thing I like the campus is its historical heritage. The buildings and the environment are all telling stories. It is such a good place for learning and research because you feel peaceful here. People here are devoted into exploring learning and exploring knowledge, you will simply be influence and join them.
Microsoft
Another one of the highlights of the trip: Microsoft provides a wide assortment of services for all industries and businesses. Taking pride in their work and products, their products are everywhere in their facilities. We were lucky to have the General Manager of US DX, Matt Thompson in the facility to give us a talk about how Silicon Valley is and innovation at Microsoft. His point of view is very interesting as he has been to Singapore for many times. His perception gives a clear contrast between Singapore's startup and Silicon Valley's startup. One of the key point that he brought upon that even though Silicon Valley is attaching vast talents from all over the world, there are still people leaving the state when they did not succeed. The Net Foreign Immigration is +19,194 and Net Domestic Migration is -5,428, about a quarter of Net Foreign Immigration. To put things into perspective, for every 4 foreigners that move into the Silicon Valley, 1 will move up. This turnover is tremendous and we can easily observe the upward trend of the continuous influx of talents. The main 2 reasons that Matt brought up is that it is easier to get investments from venture capitalist here and you are surrounded by like-minded people. However, it will be interesting to see that if this will create a bubble and if the bubble will burst in the future not far from now.
Serena
A company that lies in between start-ups and MCNs, Serena provides solutions to customers such as Fortune 5000, StarHub, Boeing, etc. They are very confident that their business model will sustain as enterprises will definitely require their solutions. The key difference between them and the other software solutions is the way they market/brand themselves. They focus on changes and only changes. By offering tools to control change in the various industries, they are able to stay ahead of all competitors by being able to be the first mover. Furthermore, given the speed that the world is changing every second, there has to be a management tool to manage all these simultaneous changes. For MNCs, Change Management is extremely sensitive as one small change made in one area might have a drastic impact on another side of the company/system. Basically, the risk that comes along with changes increases exponentially when the size of the company increases. Working at companies such as Serena is very stable, but you won't get as high of a recognition as a MNC or as much excitement as a startup. Therefore, it might be a great choice for a mid-life choice in changing jobs.
Stanford University | NUS
Stanford University truly matches up to her reputation. This is a place where all the brightest mind in the world gathers. The campus itself is breathtaking, the buildings ranges from ancient Rome styles to modern styles. The sheer size of the campus makes it not walkable and almost all the students are riding bikes. But what truly stuck me is the friendliness of the student here. Despite being one of the best, they do not exhibit any sign of arrogance. On the contrary, they were extremely friendly whenever we approach them for directions. One of the Singaporeans there even walked us all the way from the bus stop to the clubhouse. I am always impressed if someone is smart, but I will be more impressed if they are humble. All in all, Standford is an amazing place with even more amazing people.
Afterwhich, we had a mini gathering with the NUS people and fellow Singaporeans that are studying/working in the Silicon Valley. It was one of the most important nights and dinner as we get to mingle around and speak to people. Listening to the alumni speak about their experiences from SMU all the way to where they are now was inspirational. It makes us have the mindset that if they can do it, we can do it too. Also, it was awesome listening to our fellow peers from NUS talking about their experiences and dreams. It is so aligned with ours. It was amazing to meet them and find out even though we are different, but how similar we actually are.
Microsoft
When people think of Microsoft, the first thing that comes to their mind would most probably be the Windows product. Also, people, especially the teenagers will most probably think that Windows products such as the Windows phone, Bing Search Engine and Windows OS notebooks are considered more inferior as compared to IPhone, Macbook and Google Search Engine. I have the same belief that Micrsoft is not as good as Apple and Google due to the bad reviews over its products and the technology lag often mentioned in the internet.
Despite my belief, I decided to keep an open mind when visiting the Microsoft Technology Center. During the tour around Microsoft, the host showed us some cool stuff like the Demo with Kinect. The Demo with Kinect is able to detect a person emotion based on his facial expression. In addition, the Demo with Kinect can tell whether someone left or right eye is open or closed. Next, the host showed us how Microsoft is able to use the Demo with Kinect to print out the 3D models. Personally, I feel that 3D models would be popular if the cost of the materials is not so high.
The host also talked about the artificial intelligence that Microsoft is trying to do now. For example, Microsoft hoped to program Cortana so that it will be smart enough to ask the user what he wants to have for Tuesday lunch.
Next, we proceed to the meeting room where the host gave us a brief overview of the Silicon Valley culture. He also talked about how Microsoft tried to help startups by allowing the startups to use their platform. This might lock the startup in the future due to the high switching cost.
He also mentioned about the nature of venture capitalists. He said that they are lazy in nature as they just want to check whether the their investment are making profits but not their operational activities
All in all, I think that Microsoft provides a good platform for a lot of startups. But Microsft has to catch up with the rest of the technology giants to produce better products. If not, their future will be quite bleak.
Serena Software
It was great to visit the HQ of my internship company that focus on change management. It was a different experience compared to working in Serena Software in Singapore. We had the opportunity to meet Kevin Parker, a senior engineer who gave us a brief overview of the Serena Software while his colleague demonstrated the prowess of Serena Release Manager. We also met with the CEO Greg Hughes who talked about the importance of travelling and learning outside the country of residence and his startup experiences.
Change management is important in today’s world as companies are constantly making changes to the web application and then redeploying to the production server. Serena Change management allows the customers to track the changes and reduce the error when redeploying to the production server. Firms that use the Change management will be less likely to encounter problems during auditing.
Serena has an edge over its competitors in the change management as it does not need to care about the OS that the servers are using.
Personally, I feel that we can apply some of the things that we learnt from Serena Software to startups. In Serena Software, they focus on one thing but they do it better than their competitors. I feel that this is one of the things that need to be considered when creating startups. It is not ideal to have multiple core function as there are not enough manpower and funds to handle such thing.
Secondly, I feel that the quote “Do the change, people die. Do the right change, the right people die” is also applicable to startups. This means that startups have to make the correct decision to kill off their competitors or they will falter instead.
